HAROLD Rosenthal, a popular New York sportswriter during an era when New York was loaded with newspapers, legendary sportswriters and readers with multiple newspaper habits, died last week. He was 85.

I was a bit too young to enjoy his daily work in the Herald Tribune, which folded in 1966, my first year of high school.

But I was lucky. Rosenthal, during his retirement years in Florida, was an inveterate letter-writer, and, several times per year, I made his “out” box. We never met. We never exchanged a spoken word, just letters. And I saved all of them.

But one letter struck me as such a keeper that I placed it in the top drawer of my desk, figuring that one day it would find its way into a column. It has. I just hadn’t intended that to happen after Mr. Rosenthal passed.

Late in 1994, I wrote a column noting that letters of complaint from TV viewers about a particular show were being met with an undated form letter from the producer, a letter that didn’t come close to addressing the issue. Mr. Rosenthal read that column, then, in a letter dated Jan. 11, 1995, he wrote:

“The use of an undated form letter to ‘explain,’ reminds me of a true-life episode when we all rode trains for a living and a $2,000 raise for someone like Pee Wee Reese or Tommy Henrich was considered generous.

“Once in a while, if we hustled through a wrap-up game in Chicago, we’d catch the 20th Century Ltd. returning, and it would be a heady experience. We’re talking about ’47 and ’48, when a lot of us were not too long off troop trains – two in the lower and flip for the upper.

“The New York Central RR still had clout. It got the first new stuff off the line and the 20th Century was a smooth-as-silk (at 100 mph, too) trip not soon forgotten. The ‘lesser’ jobs, the Commodore Vanderbilt and the Lake Shore Ltd., weren’t too bad, either.

“Anyway, this guy slips between the soft sheets of the bed in his compartment and, geez, there it is – a bedbug, just like in the movie, ‘Hester Street.’ He’s furious and takes forthwith action. He extirpates the son of the bitch, slips it into an envelope, tries to finish a spoiled night’s sleep.

“Back at his office, he gets his public relations man to find out who is tops in running the Central, and shoots of a mad, mad letter, WITH the bedbug.

“Next day, hand-delivered, comes an answer, and from the No. 1 man. All kinds of profuse apologies, odds-against, rigid-adherence to the highest standards, etc. And, of course, it will never, NEVER happen again. Three pages worth and all it lacked was ‘Your obedient servant.’

“Somewhat mollified, he was sitting there, envelope in hand (it had been marked ‘personal and confidential’), and he tapped it against his palm, thoughtfully. Then he realized there was something else – a slip of paper – still inside.

“He shook it a couple of times and it fluttered out, a hand-written note. ‘Penny,’ it read, ‘Send this guy the bug letter.'”